Linked
Glossary of Terms
(references to DeWijsbegeerte der Wetsidee, unless
indicated.See concordance
for correlation with pages in the New Critique. The concordance
is in pdf format.)

tat tvam asi

"Tat tvam asi" means "That art thou."
It is found in the Upanishads, and refers to our experience of "identity"
with Brahman. We see Brahman in all things, and the basis for our love
of others is that they also are one with Brahman. Vivekananda spoke of
the need for a "Practical Vedanta."This was using the principles
of advaita in a practical way to achieve moral results. This was the basis
of the Ramakrishna Mission which he founded. In support of this Practical
Vedanta, Vivekananda referred to the mahavakya (great saying)
tat tvam asi in the Upanishads. If we are identical with the other and
with Brahman, then we will want to do good to the other. This mahavakya
is therefore the foundation for morality. It is not that we do good to
our neighbour out of altruism, but because the neighbour is identical
to our self.

Some Indologists have said that the use of "tat
tvam asi" in ethics is only relatively recent within Hinduism, and
that in fact neo-Hinduism was influenced by Western interpretations of
itself in coming to this viewpoint. Paul Hacker said that traditional
Hinduism did not relate "tat tvam asi" to ethics. Hacker points
to the German philosopher Schopenhauer, and to Schopenhauer's student,
Paul Deussen for this usage. Because of Schopenhauer's world-denying philosophy,
he himself did not advocate this morality. Deussen took the principle
further and actually advocated it as the basis for how we should act.
Deussen gave a lecture in Bombay on February 25, 1893 concerning the tat
tvam asi theory of the foundation of ethics. He went again to India in
1896 and there met Vivekananda. Hacker says it is not until after this
meeting that Vivekananda's writings included the principle as a basis
for ethics. Prior to this time, Vivekananda's ethics were based on the
idea of disinterested action. In fact, in his book Karma-Yoga
Vivekananda said that it was foolish talk to speak of doing good to the
world.

Whether Hacker's view of a Western influence for the "tat tvam asi"
ethics is true or not, we can find a similar basis for ethics in Dooyeweerd,
who says,

In its religious fulness of meaning the love of our
neighbour is nothing but the love of God in His image, expressed in
ourselves as well as in our fellow-men. This is why Christ said that
the second commandment is equal to the first. One can also say that
it is implied in it. (NC II, 155).

What does Dooyeweerd mean by saying that the second commandment is implied
in the first? I think he means that in loving our neighbour, we are also
loving our real and true selfhood, the image of God.

Dooyeweerd says something similar in his article "What is Man?"
We cannot have an inner meeting with another person except in the central
religious sense, which for Dooyeweerd is always related to our supratemporal
selfhood.

And when contemporary philosophy speaks of an inner
meeting of the one person with the other we must ask, What do you understand
by this inner meeting?" A real inner meeting presupposes real self-knowledge,
and can only occur in the central religious sphere of our relation with
our fellow-man. The temporal love-relations, in the above-mentioned
diversity of aspects, cannot guarantee a true inner meeting. Jesus said,
in the Sermon on the Mount, "If ye love them which love you, what
thank have ye? for sinners also love those that love them." Jesus
here apparently speaks of a love that does not concern the real centre
of our lives but only the temporal relations between men in their earthly
diversity. But how can we love our enemies and bless those who curse
us, and pray for those who persectue us, if we do not love God in Jesus
Christ?
Thus the inter-personal relation between you and me cannot lead us to
real self knowledge, as long as it is not conceived in its central sense;
and in this central sense it points beyond itself to the ultimate relation
between the human I and God. This latter central relation is of a religious
character. ("What is Man?" International Reformed Bulletin
3 (1960), 4-16, at 9-10).

And in the same article, Dooyeweerd makes it clear that our love for
our fellow man is related to our being created in the image of God, which
means being created as a being in whom the temporal world is concentrated
in our religious centre:

In an indissoluble connection with this self-revelation
as Creator, God has revealed man to Himself. Man was created in the
image of God. Just as God is the absolute origin of all that exists
outside of Himself, so He created man as a being in whom the entire
diversity of aspects and faculties of the temporal world is concentrated
within the religious centre of his existence which we call our I, and
which Holy Scripture calls our heart, in a pregnant, religious
sense. As the central seat of the image of God, the human selfhood was
endowed with the innate religious impulse to concentrate his whole temporal
life and the whole temporal world upon the service of love to God. And
since the love for God implies the love for His image in man, the whole
diversity of God's temporal ordinances is related to the central, religious
commandment of love, namely: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, soul, and mind, and thy neighbour as thyself."
This is the radical biblical sense of the creation of man in the image
of God. (p. 13)

Baader has a similar view of
ethics. In one place, he attributes it to Plato. He quotes Diotima in
Plato: Not because he is beautiful to I seek my beloved, but because he
helped me to experience the Beautiful. Philosophische Schriften I,
100-103. Religion and love have the same root.

Elsewhere, Baader expresses a similar view in relation to our participation
in the work of Christ, and the suffering of his divine-human heart. The
Redeemer gives us a new law, to love our neighbour as ourselves, and this
means to love our neighbour in God: